May 2010 Archives
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Poetry
Ah, Poor Brother
Canadian-born poet, MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner, and scholar Anne Carson—of whom Susan Sontag decreed, “She is one of the few writers writing in English that I would read anything she...
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Of Recent Note
Bad Trips
We asked our staff and readers to rewrite the end of Lost. Spoiler alert! But not really, when you consider you’d have to flash-sideways to experience the alternative realities ahead.
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Writing About Writers
Talking With Elliot Weinberger
Speaking of translation (see recent item), New Directions has an interview with poet/essayist/translator Elliot Weinberger (What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles). Of the many gems and nuggets to be...
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The Biblioracle
Greetings From the Biblioracle
Today we welcome back the Biblioracle, who takes the last five books you read and recommends what to read next.
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New Finds
Literary Boundaries?
When I received notice of Dalkey Archive Press’s Summer sale, it reminded me I just don’t do enough for those noble publishing houses like Dalkey, Archipelago, and Open...
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Mi, Mi, Mi, Mi
War Is Queer
James Lord (Mythic Giacometti), memoirist of a certain artistic set that included Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Giacometti, died recently. His fourth memoir, My Queer War (FSG), deals with his WWII...
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Personal Essays
A Simple Flying Phobia
The air conditioner puckers as the door closes. The landing gear creaks as the plane departs the jetway. Above your head, the call button dings.
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Rare Medium
Renovating Fiction
Forgive me if you have a problem with me honoring another dead white man but, in my world, to ignore the publication of a book by Jorge Luis Borges, who...
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New York, New York
At the Night Market
On a moonlit street in Brooklyn, merchants open the doors of their trucks and welcome an audience armed with curiosity and cupcakes.
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Poetry
Having Fun With Words
North Carolina-born poet Tony Hoagland (What Narcissism Means to Me), who is well-regarded and lauded in the poetry world (which is hardly ever confused as the real world), might have...
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Announcements
Alternate LOST Endings
It's the water cooler show of the decade, and now that it's over, the world is left with questions--the foremost being, "That's what they came up with?" Whether or not...
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Gallery
Boy, O Boy
Like the pensive, cautionary nature-boys in her new paintings, Julie Heffernan cobbles together tokens and symbols to create a natural world as beautiful as it is gentle.
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Surveys
Tourist Turbulence
Summer approaches, travel increases—and some people will kill you for photographing butterflies. Here’s recent news on sightseeing, from Bangkok to Lars von Trier.
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Iconography
Sad and Slow
The pantheon of chanteuses whose voices and phrasing could jackhammer your buried feelings from the tomb of defenses that life inevitably creates is not especially large—but its members are...
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Opinions
Marching in June
What is it about summer that attracts both Eisenhower and the recently engaged? A consideration of the striking similarities between weddings and wars.
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New Finds
Peace, Love, Happiness
Poet Paul Guest (My Index of Horrifying Knowledge) was permanently paralyzed in a bike accident at the age of 12, which, as Mary Karr points out, “is the least interesting thing...
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Current Reads
Mother and Son Reunion
In that evanescent realm which I think of as my reading experiences there are a handful of writers whose narrative skills move them beyond the increasingly respectable category of so-called “...
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Back in the Day
Slicks and Slickers
In American history one might corral any number of examples—Vietnam and Iraq, Warren Harding and George Bush, the elections of 1876 and 2000, Enron and AIG et al., and more—to...
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Apropos of Nothing
You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato
Ever since I read (in 1977) Thomas Whiteside’s exposition on tomatoes, entitled simply “Tomatoes,” I have used it as an example of 1) the discovery of a piece of writing on...
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Letters From Los Angeles
You Are the Best Audience Ever
A live studio audience is one part mosh pit, two parts Godot. A Glendale taping becomes a hostage situation.
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Genre Genre Genre
Two Dead Women
Though both bestselling authors (being a singular category) John Grisham and Scott Turow are well liked in what is a testy and envy-rich sub-culture, I have not been moved to...
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Coffee Table Gallery
Black Is the Night
The term film noir gets tossed around quite a bit in the polyphonious public conversations about movies—it’s possible that its meaning has been diluted to mean anything that...
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Gallery
Lists
Manuscript archivist Liza Kirwin raked together an exhaustive pile of historically significant notes, grocery lists, and romantic ephemera from some of the 20th century’s greatest artists.
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Writing About Writers
Birds Without Wings
There may be a tendency to dismiss intra-left political conflicts with a version of the old saw about literary squabbles—that is, the reason they are so impassioned and contentious...
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Reader Letters
Get Your Whistles Correct
No big deal, but a Brit would never say “…spend the night with Brown’s flutes.” It would be “Brown’s whistles.” Whistles and flutes = suits, but the short version...
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The Non-Expert
The Messy
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. When a reader disagrees with his wife over the cleanliness of their home, we propose a tidy solution.
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Back in the Day
That Devil Rum
Though my education was decidedly inferior (a product of the Chicago Public Schools and lower-tier universities), that dis-educational experience did not seem to affect my interest in history and its...
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Back in the Day
When the Dancing Stopped
While I assign to the film Saturday Night Fever the role of token/emblem of the worst decade in my lifetime, I have never enlarged that judgment to include the...
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Profiles
Pomp and Consequence
Celebrity graduation speakers should dispense wisdom and entertainment, or cause a scandal. Our writer found eight who managed to provide at least two out of three.
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Mi, Mi, Mi, Mi
My Way
As an unrepentant Vietnam war dissenter, political contrarian, and admirer of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Christopher Hitchens, I had a feeling I would not be able to read very...
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The Golem Blog
I’m Your Man
Ruth catches up on the blog, and a reader entreats The Golem to explain the intricacies of his relationship.
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Writing About Writers
Michiko and Martin
My first impulse upon encountering this article, found in/on the ostensibly British Guardian newspaper/website penned (forgive the old-school locution) by their Manhattan correspondent Ed Pilkington, was dismissal. And...
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Interview
Casey Pugh
Casey Pugh helped make Vimeo and is now the head of web development for Boxee. He also founded the crowdsourcing film project Star Wars: Uncut, which recently premiered at CPH:...
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Confab
Our Brave, Stupid New World
Reading Agni editor and Harvard mentor (The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age) Sven Birkets at his best is like listening to an old-style baritone crooner...
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Personal Essays
The Dinner Party
Your roommate, your girlfriend, and her (and your) boss: It’s a tough table, and they’ll scrutinize your food—and your dwindling frame.
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New Finds
Who Is Leslie Jamison?
Leslie Jamison certainly has some weighty credentials—though I am in a quandary as to which element of her neophytic novelist capsule-bio/gestalt moved me to pick up her debut...
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The New Pantheon
Attention Must Be Paid #55
My guess is very few of you have read novelist Gilbert Sorrentino (Mulligan Stew, Gold Fools), probably through no fault of yours, and most certainly through no fault of his. ...
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Gallery
Boonville, USA
Photographer Timothy Briner spent seven years on “Boonville,” which takes place in six towns in the U.S.—six different towns named Boonville where Briner lived for periods of time and shot portraits of private lives, overpasses, and wrestling squads.
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Apropos of Nothing
Stuffed
Probably everyone knows someone whose predilection for collecting has gone off the rails and might be viewed as a pathological condition. (Consider the two daffy uncles in Diane Keaton’s 1995...
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Poetry
Inseminating the Elephant
May is National Older Americans Month, Get Caught Reading Month, Meditation Month, Clean Air Month, Haitian Heritage Month, and a host of others—in honor of which I want to...
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Letters From London
The Passing of the Commons Plate
The British electoral system can be confusing for outsiders. An explanation of its rituals and inner workings—e.g., the role of the Chief Whife—to make things clear.
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Spoofs & Satire
From the Annals of Motherhood
When faced with insurmountable obstacles, when all other options have been exhausted—that’s when moms say the darndest things.
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Iconography
Cagey Men
For the purpose of this communiqué I don’t need to resolve whether myth-making is both a necessary and sufficient ingredient of nationalism—let’s agree that it is at...
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Rare Medium
Spring Blossoms
Spring brings forth a number of wonders, not the least of which are the quarterly editions of so-called small literary magazines. Since I am graced to be on the mailing...
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Current Reads
Antwerp, Before and After
Such has been the influence of Chilean novelist Robert Bolaño that every posthumous publication of his ouevre has been hungrily devoured by the growing multitudes of his admirers....
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Writing About Writers
The Sage of Baltimore
As is occasionally the case, I owe (and I hope I speak for his Washington Post readers) a debt of gratitude (whatever that is) to Jonathan Yardley for apprising me...
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Apropos of Nothing
Sounds and Silence
One may view our encounters with sounds and silence as a quotidian matter, but as Patrick Madden quotes Montaigne in his collection of essays, “From the most ordinary and commonplace...
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Spoofs & Satire
The Edge of Sustainable Living
U2’s guitarist has recently been slammed by environmentalists for his California real-estate development. An FAQ for concerned neighbors.
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Coffee Table Gallery
Angel Headed Hipsters
Sometimes I actually take note of how many days are like that winter holiday where people are encouraged to spend all the money they make on gifts, and then they...
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Gallery
Finders Keepers
Gallerist and poet Scott Zieher doesn’t have to look hard for art—it has a way of showing up on his doorstep. At least that’s what happened with this photo album he found of snapshots from the gay biker scene of the 1970s.
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Iconography
Red and Dead
Back in the closing years of the last century, Jon Lee Anderson, who currently writes lucid and useful dispatches from the world’s hotspots—current and future—for the New...